


joke me something awful

by vexedcer



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Study, bc i cant write anything without it, discussions about death, is that a thing?, jace is not a heterosexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 03:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12289905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: Jace is silent for a moment, taking in the man standing in front of him. “Do you wish she’d never brought you back?”“Do you?”Jace looks away.(Jace contemplates the two constants in this world; Death and Simon Lewis.)





	joke me something awful

**Author's Note:**

> the start of this is a little rocky but am i going to fix it? nope. i also bash clary a little bit in this story, but i love her. i do. i promise. sometimes she just does foolish things and i need to address them.
> 
> weirdly, i found the perfect song for this AFTER i finished writing it? so it's not a song fic, but here's [i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth by fall out boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI06EqQVEuU) which? is kinda appropriate. it's also where the title comes from.
> 
> also! there is passing-ish mention of a non-physically violent antisemitic hatecrime directed at simon towards the end, a more explicit explanation of which i'll leave in the end notes*, just if you want to prepare urself or opt out of reading this story altogether (for which i would not judge you).

“I should be dead,” he says, close to invisible in the inky blackness.

Now is not the time to be doing this; New York back alleys are not friendly places, and Simon and Jace aren't friends. Maybe. He's unclear what exactly they are now. Maybe they are friends - maybe they're just colleagues.

Maybe they're something deeper, which can only be forged in war or by the passage of blood from one to another.

“I should be dead too,” Simon says back, pushing against the tide of darkness in Jace’s mind that he cannot see. He scuffs the toe of his shoe against the ground. “But we're both still here. Maybe there's a reason.”

“Yeah, there is.” He pushes loose strands of hair out of his face, only for them to fall back down again. “It’s because Clary brought us both back.”

They’re quiet for a moment, Simon fiddling with the sleeve of his hoodie almost soundlessly. He hasn’t worn one in a while - being in the DuMort has obviously had it’s effect on Simon, the most visible being his style. Vampires always tend to be very fashionable, Jace has noticed over the years.

This hoodie is clearly well loved; frayed and thin and whatever minor detailing was on the chest has faded down into being unreadable. Simon doesn’t get cold anymore - he already is cold, frozen bones locked in icy skin. He doesn’t really need the hoodie - he could walk around shirtless in the New York snow and be fine.

Jace turns his head away at the unexpected feeling that blooms in his stomach at that thought - Simon's muscles defined under an almost ashen layer of skin. He doesn’t have the time or brainpower to parse through all the thoughts that Simon leaves in Jace’s head, unwelcome but very much there. Jace has too much he needs to be doing right now to focus on a vampire who makes him feel exposed in a new way.

But the hoodie - Simon doesn’t need it to keep warm in the frigid night air, and he definitely has a no doubtedly more stylish selection in his wardrobe in the Hotel. So it must be a comfort thing, something to layer over raw and vulnerable feelings, holding him together in a way that the stitches are barely doing for the fabric.

He’s still picking when Jace finally feels ready to turn back to him, pulling on a loose thread on the cuff in a way that is clearly anxious.   


“Do you think Clary is selfish?” He says suddenly, the words hanging in the night air between them. Jace is both shocked and not surprised. Simon starts talking again before he has a chance to answer. “She’s the reason I’m -” and he sweeps a vague hand over his torso, the old faded hoodie, “- alive right now, or unalive, I guess. She couldn’t stand to lose me even though it was kind of her fault I died.”

“It was my fault too,” Jace interrupts, voice dark and heavy, “I hung up on you.”

“But she dragged me into all of this. I would have been much happier thinking you were her drug dealer and lying to myself for the rest of my life about you suddenly appearing in front of me.”   


He finally looks up from the sleeve then, at where Jace is shrouded in the dark of the alley way, completely hidden to the unrefined eye. That raw feeling shows through on his face before it hardens into something almost defiant. “She was the one who decided to bring me back like this. This is on her, not you - not even Raphael.”

Jace is silent for a moment, taking in the man standing in front of him. “Do you wish she’d never brought you back?”   


“Do you?”

Jace looks away. Simon has always been too open for Jace’s comfort. He wears his heart on his sleeve and has no qualms about letting other people break it. He flaps his hands when he's excited about mundane things and Jace has seen him cry on at least six separate occasions despite only knowing him for less than a year. Simon naturally just  _ is - _ and Jace has never been. Jace got broken fingers and a broken bird for his troubles.   
  
Simon sighs when Jace doesn’t answer. “My family is in danger every time something goes wrong because I’m  _ this _ ,” and the word does not sound like Simon, not all Dracula and plastic fangs and  _ Twilight _ the way he usually is about himself, it’s a hiss between human teeth but Jace can almost hear it around his fangs.

“She is selfish,” Jace says when Simon doesn't add anymore. Simon’s ducked head rises back up so he can meet Jace’s eyes. “She doesn’t think of the consequences of her actions before she does what she thinks is right.”

Simon huffs a laugh in a way that makes it clear he doesn’t think any of this is funny. “Yeah, she’s always been like that. Y’know, once -” he starts, and that mask comes right back up again; Simon Lewis - the funny man, cracking jokes to make everyone else smile when the world seems to be at its blackest. Simon’s always been the one to try and lighten the mood, and at first Jace thought it was just to make everyone else feel better.

Simon’s selfless in that way, so different from Clary, in that he always needs to take care of other people, make them smile and feel better - perform this act to balance the trouble that their lives so often devolve into. But right now, there is no one to perform to; only Jace and the invisible stars and the chill of New York.

Jace never really thought of it as a way to cope. Simon has all of these raw edges he keeps well hidden, and if he sows his wounds up by cracking jokes, then - Jace isn’t going to begrudge him that. Besides, it’s much healthier than some of that stuff Jace does to quiet the swirling mess inside his own head.

Simon keeps talking, the story comfortable on his tongue, about a little boy and a little girl and an ill-fated birthday party. He seems younger somehow - lighter and freer and not the man who stands before him in a shady alley. The feeling of this softer-stomached Simon leaves a bitter taste in Jace’s mouth; Simon is in age nineteen and in body forever-eighteen and the fact that the world forced this guy who was never prepared for this life the way Jace was into being so hardened for an underground war is not fair or just. Simon just wanted to protect his loved one, even if she sent him down this path.

Jace wonders what he would have thought of Simon when they were both on that fifteen-sixteen cusp of life. He wonders that if in another life, they could have been mindless teenagers together, wonderfully mundane and safe from ichor and ashes. Would they have gone to study group together? Graduated side by side? Camp out for whatever nerd movie Simon wanted to see at a midnight showing? Would Jace have been drawn into that world with Simon, care deeply about men in capes and women with guns and the balance of the universe when it’s not his to hold?

Would they have traded secrets under blankets and snuck out of the house in the middle of the night, get drunk together and be hungover together, learn to shave together, grow up together?

Simon is reaching the end of his story,  _ and I took the blame because - _ , but even with the cotton mouth of Simon’s shift from Downworlder to kid from Brooklyn still a heavy taste, Jace selfishly wants Simon to keep talking. A year ago, six months ago, maybe even last week he’d be silently begging for Simon to just shut up for five damned minutes, but he likes this boy who isn’t weighed down by demons and Jace would like to keep him for a little while longer.

Jace doesn’t know when he starting liking Simon, as annoying as he can be sometimes. When the rolling of his eyes was accompanied by a smile and their bickering turned fond. When the thought of him shirtless twisted something in him that he’s always tried to ignore.

Jace used to pretend to himself that when he looked at a guy and thought about strong hands on his hips, that it wasn’t  _ really _ Jace. He always told himself that it was a side effect of being parabatai with Alec, souls seared together until death or betrayal, and it was just some echo of Alec’s thoughts along the bond - even if the thoughts were there long before him and Alec became as intertwined as they are now. Because - he liked women, likes their gentle curves and their soft skin, the smear of crimson lipstick on his chest and in other places.

He knows now that pushing all the blame for that onto Alec just because he’s gay was never right, and he knows that that loving beyond one gender is a possibility thanks to Magnus. He’s been pulling the layers back for a while, visiting bars he previously avoided and buying drinks for patrons and he’s seen more bedrooms than alleyways in his recent trysts. 

“ - So it turned out alright in the end, even if he never invited me to another birthday party again,” Simon finishes, dragging Jace suddenly back to reality. The change is dizzying for a second, before he finds his place back in the shadowed alley, the cool brick he’s leaning against leeching the heat from his shoulders. Simon looks fond, like he’s forgotten that the reason he even told the story was because he was proving a point about Clary’s naivety. 

The silence after the story stretches out - mainly because Jace doesn't know how to respond to such childhood innocence when his own was anything but - and Simon seems to come back to the true reality slowly. His shoulders tighten almost indiscernibly and the boy that Jace felt a sudden liking for fades away as Simon becomes nineteen again, still caught in the middle of a war that has ended. 

“You've known each other for a long time,” he says, when the quiet of the night has had enough time to speak. It's a statement more than anything. 

Simon leans back against the other wall of the narrow alley, just in the dim lamplight that barely stretches down to meet them. Jace is still tucked into the darkest part of the little sideway, leaning against a rundown law firm while Simon is up against some dingy office complex.

“We met when we were six,” he tells Jace. Simon seems to have almost deflated after the story.

The thing about Simon is - he has a personality that can fill a room. Not in the same way as Magnus, with his glittering sureness of self like the song at a party that energises a room, but like a blanket with soft and subtle and gentle folds. 

Simon's dejection seems to pillow the two of them then, intangible but still very real. 

Sometimes it feels like Jace can breath easier when he's with Simon. Simon isn't convinced by Jace's whole untouchable facade; he very much plows right through it.  He used to be unsettled by that, how clearly Simon sees all of the scars underneath the cocky mask he puts on and sometimes wears too well. But now it's a comfort, to not have to try too hard to be more than he has the capacity to be. 

Simon is an honest guy - and when you've grown up with soldiers and secrets and a youth made of lies, the genuineness of a person can make a difference. 

“Do you wish that Clary let you stay dead?” Jace asks again, but now the moment feels right - it's like a script, an act, and the first time round, Jace messed up his lines. Simon considers Jace for a minute, eyes steady in that open way that sometimes makes Jace cringe. He shrugs.

“Sometimes my mom calls and I can't stand the thought of disappearing on her again. Or never seeing the sun set again. There's enough little things in life that makes living like this worth it most days.”

“Most days?” Jace repeats, despite knowing he maybe shouldn't push. Simon's eyes seem to flash in the darkness, barely visible. 

“Yeah,” he says in a voice that tells him not to ask anymore questions about the days other than - “Most days.”

Jace heeds the warning. “Would you become a mundane again? If you could?”

“In a heartbeat,” he answers immediately, and then the heavy feeling between them lifts a little when Simon's lip quirks, “Not that I have one.”

And Jace guesses that this humour isn't always a mask. Simon just finds funny in all things good and bad. He's not trying to break the tension or make Jace think that he's a-okay when their whole conversation has the undercurrent of grieving for their own restless deaths. Sometimes Simon is just funny.

For some reason, Jace's face mirrors that tiny upturn of lips, amused. 

And as the levity settles, Simon shoves his hands into his pockets, stretching the fabric of the hoodie. He relaxes against the wall at his back, and Jace thinks again about how aged by all of this Simon can be sometimes, how he seems like he's Atlas - there's a weight on his back he can't put down.

Maybe it's only Simon's own world. Maybe that's enough.

“Do you wish Clary hadn't brought you back?” Simon asks, shoving his hands deeper, and perhaps there's something in the air tonight that makes them honest, a gas or a spell  because suddenly Jace is compelled to tell Simon everything he's ever choked down on.

Instead he shrugs, like Simon, and makes a non-committal noise. “I don't know. I guess it's just - it doesn't feel the same as before.”

“It's like you're empty but somehow full at the same time,” Simon states and Jace feels a wave of relief sweep over him. 

“Yeah,” he replies, almost cautious which seems redundant after everything else he's shared tonight. “It's like - how can people expect me to feel the same after I was pulled out of my body and then stuffed back in, you know?”

Simon nods.  The silence descends on them again - it's almost as if it's a three-person conversation; Jace, Simon and Silence who speaks just as often as they do.

“You know,” Simon starts after a beat, “If it means anything, I'm glad you're here.”

And that's what Jace means when he says that Simon is good - despite everything, the insults and fighting and jealousy and bitterness that they've both pushed onto each other, Simon is still grateful that Jace is alive. Simon is a good person, and people like him don't deserve to suffer the way Simon has in the year he's known him.

Around Hanukkah, he remembers Simon trying to pray through chapped lips, and sometimes he'd stop between verses to spit out a mouthful of blood. But he always kept going.

Back in March, someone spray painted a swastika onto the driver's side door of Simon's van. Jace hadn't really understood what it meant at the time since his grasp on mundane history was vague at best. He had volunteered to help clean it up because Simon was clearly upset over it even if he was trying to save face, but it was only later when Clary sat Jace down and explained what it meant that made his blood boil.

Over the past summer, Simon told him the story of his father's death while very drunk. Jace doesn't know if Simon remembers it at all, and he may not have died this year or even recently but when it still clearly aches so much - it means something.

Simon seems to be followed by tragedy which makes dying and coming back undead a part of the pattern in his life. Jace hates it.

“I’m glad you're here too, Simon,” he tells him, instead of saying any of the other things that have been floating around in his mind the past half an hour. He wants to tell Simon that he's sorry for all the shit he's pulled and the things he's said, he wants to tell him he never deserved the cards he's been dealt, but most of all - Jace wants to hug him, and if that's not a subversive of his own expectations then Jace doesn't know what is.

_ No, never  _ be damned.

“You know,” Simon starts lightly, and Jace can already tell with this shift, that Simon is finding cover and safety in his humour now, “In another life I think we could have been friends.”

In this moment, Jace is unsure. Colleagues or friends or something else?

“We are friends, Simon,” he says with very little deliberation. He’s still unsure what they are and where they stand, but all the same it comes out soft and caring in a foreign way and Jace thinks he might even like it.

Simon's face lights up with his toothy grin, clearly tamping down the full wattage. Simon's excitement has always been contagious - whether it's a well-worn mundane reference or a new fascination at the Shadow World, that excitement always curls up around Jace like a blanket.

“But don't tell anyone,” he adds, trying to recover from that gentle moment - because even if he liked how it felt, emotional vulnerability is still something he needs to work on and tonight he's hit his quota. 

Simon's face turns serious except for the tiny purse of his lips to repress his smile. “I'll take it to the grave.”

Jace rolls his eyes as he pushes off the wall, strolling down the alley. Alec should be at the rendezvous point soon and then they can meet Clary and Izzy after that. “That doesn't make me feel better - you sleep in a coffin.”

Simon speeds ahead to be in front of him, walking backwards (and Jace knows that's a bad idea already) and says, “Okay, one, they're caskets and not coffins, there's a difference, and two -”

Jace may not know why Simon has been dragged into this world and suffered for it - but he's selfish enough to admit that having Simon here with his broken-facet mouth and sincerity is a good thing.

(And it's definitely a good thing when Simon's backwards walking pitches him into a dirty puddle of New York sludge.

Simon glares at him for laughing, but accepts the hand up.

Maybe friends is a good place to start.)

**Author's Note:**

> *: someone spray paints a swastika on the driver side door of simon's van with no specific explanation as to why (not like n*zis _need_ a motive to be antisemitic). the scene isn't explored in detail and is used as an example in the exploration of a larger theme within the story. 
> 
> [my main blog](http://vexedcer.tumblr.com) [my writing blog](http://residentqueer.tumblr.com) \- come say hi!


End file.
